Excel Consulting for Healthcare

Many businesses might describe financial and operating efficiency as a life-or-death factor in their operational survival, but in the healthcare realm, this phrase can ring quite literally true. Failure to interpret or use data properly can not only bring your healthcare business to the edge of ruin; it can also place patients’ lives in unnecessary jeopardy due to critical errors in patient care, electronic health record (EHR) management and/or shift staffing. Fortunately, one of the most powerful tools you can use to minimize these issues is probably already on your facility’s computers. In trained hands, Microsoft Excel can serve as a remarkably useful and flexible program for healthcare professionals. Here are five of the top uses healthcare professionals can find in Microsoft Excel.

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Data Consolidation

Healthcare organizations typically receive data in a variety of ways and from a variety of sources. Different departments and individuals may record and submit their data over a bewildering number of worksheets. This situation can make data interpretation impossible — unless you know how to consolidate that data. Microsoft Excel makes it possible to brings several types of data from disparate worksheets together into a single workbook, giving you the one point of reference you desperately need to maintain order.

Payroll/Schedule Organization

A well-organized, well-staffed healthcare facility is a safer, more efficient facility. In tasks such as prioritizing care in ICUs, organizational data can literally save the lives of patients. Assigning the right number of healthcare workers for each department and shift also matters — and accurate payroll accounting is critical for ensuring that those workers are actually getting paid. Microsoft Excel lets you integrate various work and payment schedules into a comprehensible database.

Data Cleanup

With the sheer glut of data that pours into your databases day after day and year after year, it may come as no surprise that much of it is irrelevant, redundant, inaccurate or even contradictory. Duplicate rows, misspellings, names entered in the wrong case, and other gaffes can cause serious misunderstandings and other headaches among medical and administrative employees. But Microsoft Excel has some invaluable built-in abilities to clean that data up for you. A user with the proper training can use a combination of features such as Spell Check, Find/Replace, and Remove Duplicates to turn that chaos into usable data.

Revenue, Expense, and Loss Analysis

Most medical personnel aren’t trained as accountants, yet many of them are expected to record, track and interpret financial data on a regular basis nonetheless. Microsoft Excel makes it considerably easier for your team to follow both Net Patient Service Revenue (NPSR) and other, non-patient revenue streams, helping you understand how that revenue is being generated and what direction it seems to be heading in. It also makes it easier for you to calculate expenses, gains and losses. This clearer look at the dollars and cents of your business allows you to direct funds more wisely and make keener long-term strategy decisions.

Quality Improvement (QI) Initiatives

When you can’t make heads or tails of your electronic health records, optimizing and enhancing your quality of care for specific ailments becomes all but impossible — especially in smaller facilities where individual expertise is especially important. Microsoft Excel enables you to make customized dashboards and reports that organize critical data for quick assimilation and big-picture insights. This feature helps guide clinical decisions and operations toward smarter processes that allow for dramatic improvements in quality control.

The Benefits of Using Microsoft Excel for Healthcare Services

From streamlining and purifying your EHRs to understanding where the revenue is coming from, Microsoft Excel might turn out to be the greatest digital lifesaver your healthcare organization could possibly have wished for. But expert consulting & training is a must if you want your team to exploit the full benefits available through this time-tested application. Contact ExcelHelp to learn more about our professional consulting team or scheduling onsite Excel training for your managers, administrators and staff.

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